Other than that, Brother’s in Arms Hell’s Highway is a beautiful and engrossing cinematic experience that is as much fun to watch, as it is to play. Games rarely are this enjoyable and I can't remember the last time I started up a game and couldn't stop playing it.

What is certain now is that Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is another rousing entry in a great series. The beautiful landscapes complement the gritty combat, and thoughtful cinematic techniques breathe life into the engaging characters. Despite the somewhat spotty story and sundry oddities, Hell's Highway is a game you should consider playing twice. The unlockable "authentic" difficulty mode removes all the heads-up display elements and really allows the visual design to shine. The story resonates more powerfully because you know the characters well, and the renewed challenge ratchets up the intensity. With so many exciting elements, Hell's Highway provides ample motivation to don the Allied uniform once more.

Regardless, developer Gearbox Software is sending gamers back to Staff Sergeant Matt Baker’s World War II in Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, published by Ubisoft. Set against the backdrop of Market Garden, the game follows Baker and his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division as they push forward against German forces in a variety of familiar settings. Equal parts Medal of Honor and Company of Heroes with liberal sprinklings of HBO’s Band of Brothers thrown in to strengthen the narrative, Hell’s Highway has finally emerged from its extended development as what is easily the best entry in Gearbox’s long-running tactical FPS series.

However, Hell’s Highway is very accessible and does have broad appeal. BIA fans will find it an improvement over the last instalment, and anyone that hasn’t played the series before could easily weather the linear play and find it a very refreshing change from the glut of stock first-person shooters currently available. Either way, Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway is a great time sink for anyone who enjoys a tactical, squad-based first-person shooter.

In conclusion, Hell’s Highway has plenty of flaws. There are a couple gameplay hitches and unresolved bugs, and multiplayer could use some more polish. The fantastic storytelling coupled with an equally impressive score though will make you forget your grievances with the finished product, and there are just enough extras in the campaign to make completionists return a couple times to get them all. Overall, Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway is $60 well spent.

Clocking in at around 10 hours, Hell’s Highway provides tons of drama but brings with it some new gameplay elements that don’t mesh with the series philosophy. Admittedly as a straight shooter, Hell’s Highway is competent – and sometimes great – in this regard. Most of my problems stemmed from how Hell’s Highway was drifting toward something more shooter-centric, because that wasn’t what the series was always about. Seeing Hell’s Highway as just another, well, game, it’s a well-built shooter with some interesting squad mechanics that are useful from time to time. Now that Baker’s story is reaching the tail-end of the war, it’ll be interesting to see how the dramatic shift in setting will affect the next game. Until then, any fan of the series should pick up Hell’s Highway without hesitation, even if the gameplay won’t play out as expected.

Hell's Highway is a World War II first-person shooter, but it's also a lot more than that. Gearbox doesn't nail every aspect of the execution, but it's unique enough to warrant a look, even if you think you're done with WWII.

Hell’s Highway is a welcomed addition to the series, bringing some fine new elements to the series’ successful blend of compelling narrative and squad-based gameplay. While there are some problems, including spotty AI and rough squad controls, the game is still a solid title for fans of WWII shooters.

The Airborne soldiers that fought and lived through the horrors of World War II, and particularly that Operation Market Garden deserve respect, honor, and tales that highlight their sacrifices on the field of battle (as all soldiers do). Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway does an excellent job of presenting the story of these men, and is as compelling as many war movies. While many of the franchise's traditional gameplay elements return, such as the tactical controls of squads, so do the issues associated with those controls. While the visuals are better, it still has a number of AI issues, making a title that's good, and even better than its console brethren, but not great.

All told, Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway is not a great game, but it's not terrible either, though it certainly has its share of flaws. There are some technical problems and crash bugs that need ironed out (especially for ATI users, from the sound of it), and the feel and responsiveness of the controls could have been better. The AI is lacking, but those special slow-motion moments when you score a particularly nasty headshot or a grenade blows a guy into thirds are rewarding and add to the cinematic feel. It's a poignant story hampered with some aging gameplay mechanics. In an already crowded genre, the gimmicks and familiarities are really only going to appeal to series stalwarts. Unfortunately for the Brothers in Arms saga, there are better, more polished games to be had out there right now, and it may get forgotten for not being all that it could be.

All in all, the best way to describe BiA: Hell’s Highway is that it’s a nice evolution of its predecessor rather than been a true revolution of the developers efforts from last gen. In places you’ll probably wish Gearbox could have done more to make the game a true must have, but for the most part it is quite interesting. Furthermore, because of game taking place during Operation Market Garden, in the later stages of World War II you at least have another setting to amuse yourself with this time round - which is a nice plus. At the very least you have to respect the game simply due to it being a perfectly playable World War II shooter in a market that is still absolutely saturated, that in itself is quite the accomplishment.

Fans of the series shouldn’t be disappointed by what Gearbox has done with Hell’s Highway. The focus for these titles has always been on the single-player campaign, plot, and characters, and all these things come together quite nicely. The player will find that Hell’s Highway offers an enjoyable experience from start to finish despite it’s less than perfect execution. While the multiplayer has potential, in its current state it has far too many issues to be a consistently fun endeavor. Therefore, if you’re planning on seeing the Brothers in Arms story through to the end, Hell’s Highway is a must buy. If you’re a newcomer to the series, it’s recommended that you play the first two before delving into this one, as you’ll miss out on the developed story up to that point. If you’re looking for a new World War II multiplayer experience, it would be best to skip over Hell’s Highway and wait for something a little more multiplayer-oriented.

It's more than slightly ironic that a company rooted in creating Half-Life add-ons—a game that made almost all its cinematic moments part of the actual gameplay—has chosen to make so much of this game non-interactive. Thankfully, the writing is done well enough to make these characters and situations interesting most of the time.

It can’t capture the nuance of real life, and that’s a problem. Nobody is suggesting that such a marriage of styles and boundary pushing storytelling shouldn’t be attempted in gaming, and in that Hell’s Highway is incredibly brave, but arguably any effort to be both an enjoyable first person shooter and stony-faced anti-war tale is doomed from the outset. Something must be compromised, it’s just a shame that in this case it happens to be the whole package.